adenoid renaldo: February 2013

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Grief besets family of Pistorius' slain girlfriend

Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, right, and his sister Aimee, left, are driven to a relatives home in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Pistorius was released on bail and will return to court June, 4, 2013 to face charge a charge of pre-meditated murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. (AP Photo/Nelius Rademan-FOTO24-Beeld) SOUTH AFRICA OUT NO SALES. NO ARCHIVE, ONLINE OUT MAGAZINES OUT INTERNET OUT TV OUT

Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius' uncle, Arnold Pistorius, speaks to journalists at the end of the bail hearing at the magistrate court in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Oscar Pistorius was granted bail in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Friday and will return to court June, 4, 2013 to face a charge of pre-meditated murder in the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius' sister Aimee Pistorius looks on during his bail hearing at the magistrate court in Pretoria, South Africa, Friday, Feb. 22, 2013. Pistorius was granted bail in the Pretoria Magistrate's Court on Friday. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

El atleta Oscar Pistorius aparece parado en el tribunal durante la audiencia de fianza por el asesinato de su novia Reeva Steenkamp el viernes, 22 de febrero de 2013, en Pretoria, Sud?frica. (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)

Mike Steenkamp, the uncle of Reeva Steenkamp, centre, speaks to an unidentified man, holding a photo of Reeva, after her funeral in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2013. Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius is charged with the premeditated murder of Steenkamp on Valentine's Day. The defense lawyer says it was an accidental shooting. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? Far from the courtroom drama that has gripped South Africa, the family of Oscar Pistorius' slain girlfriend has struggled with its own private deluge of grief, frustration and bewilderment.

The victim's relatives also harbor misgivings about efforts by the Olympian's family to reach out to them with condolences.

Pistorius, meanwhile, spent Saturday at his uncle's home in an affluent suburb of Pretoria, the South African capital, after a judge released him on bail following days of testimony that transfixed South Africa and much of the world. He was charged with premeditated murder in the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day, but the athlete says he killed her accidentally, opening fire after mistaking her for an intruder in his home.

"We are extremely thankful that Oscar is now home," his uncle, Arnold Pistorius, said in a statement that also acknowledged the law must run its course. "What happened has changed our lives irrevocably."

Mike Steenkamp, Reeva's uncle, told The Associated Press that the family of the double-amputee athlete initially did not send condolences or try to contact the bereaved parents, but had since sought to reach out in what he described as a poorly timed way. After Pistorius was released on bail in what amounted to a victory for the defense, Arnold Pistorius said the athlete's family was relieved but also in mourning "with the family" of Reeva Steenkamp.

"Everybody wants to jump up with joy," Mike Steenkamp said, speculating on the mood of Pistorius' family after the judge's decision. "I think it was just done in the wrong context, completely."

A South African newspaper, the Afrikaans-language Beeld, quoted the mother of Reeva Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, law school graduate and participant in a television reality show, as saying the family had received a bouquet of flowers and a card from the Pistorius family.

"Yes, but what does it mean? Nothing," June Steenkamp said, according to the Saturday edition of Beeld. She also said Pistorius' family, including sister Aimee, a somber presence on the bench behind the Olympian during his court hearings in the past week, must be "devastated" and had done nothing wrong.

"They are not to blame," June Steenkamp said. According to Beeld, she said she had hoped to plan a wedding for her daughter one day.

In an affidavit, 26-year-old Oscar Pistorius said he was "absolutely mortified" by the death of "my beloved Reeva," and he frequently sobbed in court during the several days during which his bail application was considered. However, prosecutor Gerrie Nel, suggested in a scathing criticism that Pistorius was actually distraught because his vaunted career was now in peril and he was in grave trouble with the law.

"It doesn't matter how much money he has and how good his legal team is, he will have to live with his conscience if he allows his legal team to lie for him," Barry Steenkamp, Reeva's father, told Beeld .

"But if he is telling the truth, then perhaps I can forgive him one day," the father said. "If it didn't happen the way he said it did, he must suffer, and he will suffer ... only he knows."

Barry Steenkamp suffered "heavy trauma" at the loss of his daughter and his remarks to the newspaper partly reflect how he is working through it, said his brother, Mike Steenkamp.

Steenkamp was cremated in a funeral ceremony on Feb. 19 in her family's hometown of Port Elizabeth on South Africa's southern coast. Mike Steenkamp delivered a statement about the family's grief to television cameras, at one point breaking down in tears.

The three-story house where Pistorius is staying with his aunt and uncle lies on a hill with a view of Pretoria. It has a large swimming pool and an immaculate garden.

Pistorius was born without fibula bones due to a congenital defect and had his legs amputated at 11 months. He has run on carbon-fiber blades and was originally banned from competing against able-bodied peers because many argued that his blades gave him an unfair advantage. He was later cleared to compete. He is multiple Paralympic medalist, but he failed to win a medal at the London Olympics, where he ran in the 400 meters and on South Africa's 4x400 relay team.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-02-23-Pistorius-Shooting/id-77a2c546ba9a46baa2e62fbb099b132f

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Oscars 2013 and Spielberg: The storyteller is part of our cultural DNA

Oscars 2013: Oscar or not for 'Lincoln,' Steven Spielberg has not only shaped our fantasies, he's influenced a generation's perspective on history.

By Lester D. Friedman,?Contributor, Daniel B. Wood,?Staff writer / February 23, 2013

Oscars 2013 and Steven Spielberg as global icon: This is the cover story in the Feb. 25 issue of The Christian Science MonitorWeekly.

Jean-Paul Pelissier/REUTERS/File

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Geneva, n.y.; and Los Angeles

A shark fin glides ominously near unsuspecting holiday beach swimmers, a crescendo of musical peril rising ? "DA da, DA da, DA da."

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A giant, rolling boulder nips menacingly at the heels of a fleeing, ragged archaeologist.

The glowing, spiky finger of a goggle-eyed alien points from a California suburban street into space.

While the craggy visage of America's stovepipe-hatted 16th president may not yet be as ingrained in American pop culture DNA as those iconic movie moments of the past 40 years, the celluloid depiction of Lincoln ? which won the most Academy Award nominations this year with 12 ? shares the distinction of being crafted by the same movie magician responsible for six of the 25 highest-grossing movies of all time.

Steven Spielberg has not only shaped our fantasies, but with "Lincoln" he has influenced the perspective that a generation of Americans will have on a key part of history.

As an audience of a several hundred million gathers for one of the planet's global campfire moments Feb. 24, the popcorn-popping masses will await the verdict to see if Mr. Spielberg will win his third Oscar for Best Director ? to tie such icons as William Wyler and Frank Capra ? and remain behind only legendary John Ford, who won four.

Over bowls of steaming chili at home, and around office water coolers, fans and critics may debate what this year's best movie is, but one thing is certain: Love this director or demean him, Spielberg's movies are woven more deeply into the fabric of American daily life and culture than those of any other director in history.

He burst onto the world stage with "Jaws" in 1975. With just two road-movie thriller features ? "Duel" and "The Sugarland Express" ? under his belt, Spielberg originally conceived the Peter Benchley bestseller as a low-budget creature-feature. But he ran into so many production problems filming realistically on water ? from a malfunctioning robotic shark to a drunken British lead actor ? that he had to reconceive his vision of horror right on location, deciding to keep his deep-sea monster lurking mostly off-screen.

Spielberg's counterintuitive improvisation paid off, showcasing his populism across the spectrum from substance to style in actors, scripts, plots, conflict, tone, and all the rest. The first of many cultural catchphrases was born ? "We're gonna need a bigger boat" ? as well as an industry-changing marketing phenomenon that could only have been launched in America: the summer blockbuster. "Jaws" was the first movie to earn more than $100 million in theatrical rentals. This distinction also earned Spielberg criticism ? along with his "Star Wars" director buddy, George Lucas ? for infantilizing movies and forcing studios to spend their resources on fewer and higher-budget movies.

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Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/9SNcIuyuDnY/Oscars-2013-and-Spielberg-The-storyteller-is-part-of-our-cultural-DNA

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After brief respite, repo men may be busy again

Paul A. Eisenstein , The Detroit Bureau ? ? ? 11 hrs.

There?s been plenty of talk about the U.S. housing crisis, foreclosures rising to record levels during the recent recession. But car buyers also struggled to pay their bills and keep the repo man from showing up at their door.

The good news is that loan delinquencies fell sharply since the depths of the nation?s economic downturn and repossessions have likewise dropped sharply. In fact, they hit a 12-year low in 2012, says Manheim Consulting. But another study warns that the trend might soon reverse itself.

For the first time since 2009, the number of 60-day auto loan delinquencies increased during the fourth quarter of 2012, warns Experian Automotive, and with lenders writing more of the risky, subprime car loans that slammed the industry during the recession, the repo man could soon get busy again.

The Detroit Bureau: Audi set to reveal new plug-in version of little A3

For the time being, he?s sitting on his hands, repossessions fell by 27.6% during the fourth quarter, says a new Experian report, accounting for just 0.46% of outstanding auto loans. That was true no matter who issued the loan, banks, credit unions, ?captive? or automaker-operated finance companies, or other lenders.

?Overall, our Q4 analysis shows that the auto lending market is extremely healthy,? says Melinda Zabritski, director of automotive credit for Experian Automotive. ?Of course, you never want to see an increase in delinquencies, but when you take a step back and look at the market compared to where it was three years ago, we still have remarkable stability.?

For now. But Experian?s new report also raises some flags. Those 60-day delinquencies are up, albeit ever so slightly, from 0.72% during the fourth quarter of 2011 to 0.74% during the final three months of 2012. That was nonetheless the first rise since Q4 2009.

The Detroit Bureau: NYTimes Admits Mistakes - But Says Tesla Also at Fault

That?s enough to worry some observers, including Manheim?s chief economist Tom Webb who predicts repossessions could increase by 26.9% through 2015.

Industry observers say that if this happens the industry may have only itself to blame, however. In the years leading up to the recession, lenders seemed to be willing to offer cash to just about anybody. Indeed, Japanese automaker Mitsubishi nearly went broke when it was burned by a NINJA loan program aimed at attracting young, first-time buyers. That?s short for No Income, No Jobs or Assets, and many of the folks who fit that description were pleased to get a free ride for a year ? turning back the keys when the first payments were due.

Even with more conventional loans terms were loosened significantly, much as they were by housing lenders, creating an industry nightmare when the economy collapsed.

But automakers weren?t much happier with what followed. Lenders went to the other extreme. At times even potential car buyers with top credit scores could not line up loans. And the lease deals that had become a major part of the industry all but completely dried up for everyone. The lack of lending helped drive the U.S. automotive market into its biggest downturn since the Great Depression.

The Detroit Bureau: Prepping the Next Ford Mustang

On the positive side, that meant only the most qualified and responsible customers were signing for loans. And, in turn, delinquencies plunged by 31.8% between 2009 and 2012 ? last year only 1.3 million vehicles being repossessed, according to Manheim, the lowest level in a dozen years.

But even as repos fell, lenders were loosening terms last year, a factor in the unexpectedly strong revival of the U.S. automotive market which soared to 14.5 million last year. Even more credit will be needed to fuel an anticipated surge that could see 15.5 million for 2013.

The question is whether lenders will return to the practices that caught up with them during the recession or if more qualified buyers will re-enter the market. The slight rise in fourth-quarter repossessions gives reason for economists like Manheim?s Webb to be worried.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/after-brief-respite-repo-men-may-be-busy-again-1C8479650

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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Chicago "not bidding" for 2024 Olympics, says Mayor http://ow.ly/hVvrd

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/insidethegames/posts/296645093796121

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Suffer the Little Children

Why do we like to read tragic stories about children?

Photo by B. Szewczyk/iStockphoto/Thinkstock

At first I couldn?t read Emily Rapp?s memoir, The Still Point of the Turning World, about her son, Ronan, who was diagnosed with Tay-Sachs disease at an eye doctor appointment when he was 9 months old. She learned then about the rapidly progressing disease that would lead to his death a couple of years later. I kept putting the book down, losing it somewhere in my house, getting distracted, picking up other books. This was not because the book wasn?t very good, but because it was.

Rapp is a deep and gifted storyteller. ?What I was being asked to do,? she writes, ?felt both entirely instinctive and completely impossible.? At one point, she describes a scene where she puts away the toys that Ronan can no longer play with, not because he outgrows them but because he has lost the ability to play with them.

At first I thought maybe the book was too harrowing ?to read. There are piles of books in my room. Why read this one? Often one reads memoirs or novels to be transported to another place, to India, to a 19^th-century country estate, but this is a place that no one in her right mind would want to be transported to.?

And yet, when I finally settled down with the book in the middle of the night, and read it all at once without stopping, I felt something like guilt, some feeling that I should be looking away, averting my eyes, losing the book again somewhere in my house. It seemed to me that my great desire to know more was somehow suspect, that it involved a curiosity, a kind of voyeurism or uncomfortable fascination that somehow shouldn?t be indulged. (Though clearly Rapp wrote the book to find readers.)

My avidness made me think about what lies behind our appetite for stories of extreme suffering, for descriptions of terrible things happening to babies and tiny children, for the well-narrated, almost unbearable heartbreak that Rapp?s book represents? ?

The emotional complexity of reading The Still Point of the Turning World is that you may care about Ronan and you may be invested in Rapp?s generous, sharp, poetic vision of the world, but you do not know them. Though you will feel grief, you are not feeling the grief that someone who loves them feels. In a sense, though, you are rehearsing that grief, you are working through it, examining it, trying it on, wondering what it would be like. This seems like a morally complicated act to me, though someone less critical might call it empathy.

The uneasiness I felt reminds me of reading tragic stories about babies in tabloids like the New York Post, the tricky voyeurism, which is not in that case transformed by the fact that what you are reading is art or contains within it beautiful things or interesting insights. I remember, for example, the story of a baby who was killed outside the Central Park Zoo by a falling branch. The family, visiting from Union City, N.J., was in the city for a day. The father was taking a picture on the promenade outside the sea lion exhibit near the animal clock, while the mother was holding the baby when a rotting branch fell from 25 feet above them. The baby?s name was Gianna Ricciutti, and she was 6 months old. A photograph of her accompanying the article shows a dark haired, pretty baby beaming up at her mother in some unknown leafy place.?

I read the continuation of the story on a later page. I thought about the parents. I felt sick about the baby. I read the follow-ups to the story, which were largely about trees and the park department. Somehow I felt like I needed to know more. But what other detail was I looking for? What else did I need to read? Maybe it was the line that explained why this particular thing happened to this particular baby. Was I telling myself that in a world of rotting branches on glorious days, my own baby was safely sleeping in a green-painted crib in a room near the garden? Was I trying to prove that this specific tragedy happened to this specific baby and in fact had nothing at all to do with anything that could in any way happen to my baby?

As Freud put it, ?Our habit is to lay stress on the fortuitous causation of the death?accident, disease, infection, advanced age; in this way we betray our effort to reduce death from a necessity to a chance event.? The more detail we can consume about a death, the easier it is to reduce it to a chance event; the deeper we go into its specificity, the less we face our own abject vulnerability.

Our fear, then, is entwined with our fascination, our denial wrapped up with our voyeurism. In one of the best passages of the book, Rapp blows through our denial with a description of ?dragon parents? who have terminally ill babies and children?this is in contrast to ?tiger moms? who are fiercely exhorting their children to succeed:

Dragons are scary. Our grief is primal and unwieldy and it embarrasses people. Talking about end-of-life care decisions for our babies to a bunch of parents with typically developing kids is tantamount to breathing fire at a dinner party or on the playground. Nobody wants to see what we see so clearly. Nobody wants to know the truth about their children, about themselves: that none of it is forever.

Rapp writes toward the end of her memoir about a visiting a Zen center. During the first meal she tells one of the officiants about Ronan. The officiant nods calmly and does not react with ?histrionics.? Rapp is relieved, aware suddenly of the burden of other people?s reactions, the drain of managing other people?s emotions, because this Zen woman does not have a reaction. Rapp writes, ?Here I had tossed death across the table at a stranger who looked straight at it without blinking.? In some sense that is what The Still Point of the Turning World allows us to do: look at death without blinking. It offers us the precise combination of vividness and distance necessary to think through the unthinkable.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=72d1f6d5958daa8bca631bb007ce7022

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Sports stories in the February 21 edition of the Fort Bragg Advocate-News

- Lady 'Wolves: Good-bye seniors, hello rising basketball stars - 'Wolf Pack competes at NCS wrestling championships - 'Wolves end basketball season on the road - Mendocino Coast Sea Dragons compete in Napa Valley swim meet - OneLove Mendo Samurai soccer team plays in Stockton - Golf Notes: Jake Brake, by Larry Miller

Source: http://www.advocate-news.com/ci_22621932/sports-stories-february-21-edition-fort-bragg-advocate?source=rss_viewed

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Separated bike lanes, slower vehicle speeds greatly reduce bicycle injuries

Feb. 20, 2013 ? Using your bicycle to commute to work has numerous health and environmental benefits. Yet, the largest Canadian study on cycling injuries led by Ryerson University suggests cyclists are at risk of injury due to the lack of cycling infrastructure in large urban centres.

"Previous studies have focused on the measures such as helmets that reduce harm after a crash occurs," says Anne Harris, lead author of the study, who is an avid cyclist herself and an assistant professor with Ryerson's School of Occupational and Public Health. "Our study is one of the first to take a comprehensive look at how route infrastructure, particularly at intersections and major roadways, might influence the risk of cyclist injury in Canada."

North American cyclists are eight to 30 more times likely to be seriously injured while cycling than their counterparts in Germany, Denmark and The Netherlands. Harris says one explanation could be the availability of segregated bike lanes in those countries.

The major findings of the Ryerson's School of Occupational and Public Health study are:

Intersections -- safer

? Intersections at residential streets

? Cars travelling 30 km and under decreases the risk of injuring a cyclist by half

Intersections -- less safe

? Traffic circles: designed as a traffic calming measure, actually increase the risk of cyclist injuries. In the study, 19 out of 690 accidents occurred in Vancouver intersections with traffic circles

? Grade: roads that slope downhill are more dangerous than uphill roads

? Arriving at the intersection in the opposite direction of vehicular traffic

Non-intersections -- safer

? Separated bike lanes along major streets

? Bike routes with traffic diversion on local streets

? Bike-only paths separated from traffic

? Non-intersections -- less safe

? Streetcar tracks

? Downhill grade

? Construction at site

? Shared bike lanes or single bike lanes with parked cars present

The researchers also found that painted and shared bike lanes commonly found in Toronto offered no significant protection for cyclists.

"Our research demonstrates that transportation planners really need to segregate cyclists from motor vehicle traffic just as we use sidewalks to separate pedestrians," says Harris. "If people see cycling as a safer activity, they would be more encouraged to commute by bike, which makes them more active and healthy citizens."

Research Methodology

Harris and her co-authors, also cyclists, interviewed 690 cyclists injured in downtown Toronto and Vancouver between May 2008 and November 2009. According to Census data, nearly two per cent of people in Toronto and almost four percent in Vancouver commute by bicycle.

In the study, all of the cyclists sought medical attention at emergency departments with injuries ranging from minor to serious. Of the total number of cyclists, 211 were injured at intersections and 479 injured along roads or paths.

The researchers gathered two sets of data. First, they asked all of the cyclists to map the route they were injured on, and describe the details of their trip and their injury. Next, an observer visited one or two randomly selected locations along each route to coincide the injury site (if it was at an intersection or not). Specific details about each site were gathered such as the presence and type of bike lanes, grade of the road and traffic volume. Finally, the researchers performed statistical analyses to look at the relationship between route infrastructure and relative safety.

At the time of the study, both Toronto and Vancouver had cycling infrastructure typical of North American cities: shared bike lanes, local street bike paths, off-street paths and a few kilometres of physically separated bicycle routes beside major roads. Some of the features unique to Toronto were streetcar tracks on major streets, whereas traffic circles are common in Vancouver residential areas. Vancouver also has a helmet law for all ages, where it's optional for Toronto adult cyclists.

The study's co-authors are: University of British Columbia and University of Minnesota -- Conor Reynolds; University of British Columbia -- Kay Teschke , Peter Cripton, Hui Shen, Shelina Babul, Jeffrey Brubacher, Garth Hunte, Melody Monro; Simon Fraser University -- Meghan Winters; University of Toronto -- Mary Chipman, Lee Vernich; St. Michael's Hospital and University of Toronto -- Michael Cusimano; and University of Toronto and University Health Network -- Steven Friedman.

The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, was funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Ryerson University.

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Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/UhcfOHBgVYQ/130220131744.htm

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Monday, February 18, 2013

Man accused of church burglary

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Source: http://www.click2houston.com/news/Man-accused-of-church-burglary/-/1735978/18588696/-/1377wemz/-/index.html

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